How Many People Own Cryptocurrency

Here you will learn about the present and future owners of a cryptocurrency. Read about its features and how to count the number of people dealing with it.

How Do You Think: How Many People Own Cryptocurrency?

Cryptocurrency owners geography

Cryptocurrency starts scoring points, but many users still do not know about its purposes. To complete the picture, it is useful to know users’ numbers owning it, how they affect modern economics and how they will increase. American businessman and hedge-fund manager James Altucher sounded forecasts about the electronic money future.

He thinks soon all banks will accept cryptocurrencies and will create own blockchain platforms. He also supposes the economic systems in several countries will crash. Governments will use cryptocurrencies. Currencies (mostly Bitcoin, as James considers it the most stable currency) increase their influence on average citizens’ and professionals’ lives.

Counting the Bitcoin owners quantity now can help to predict the situation in the market and possible risks.

Why Do People Use Cryptocurrencies?

Some believe it is a way to become rich, others note the overall phenomenon convenience. These reasons help to guess how many people use cryptocurrency:

Swiftness. Operations in BTC are conducted much faster than bank transactions. The transactions with “zero-confirmation” run instantly. The acceptant takes all transfer risks, which is unapproved by the blocks’ chain. Or it can take about ten minutes if the acceptant waits for confirmation;

It is cheap. One can easily doubt the previous statement by saying that credit card transactions do not take much time. Yes, it is true. But acceptant pays an additional price for this privilege. The network transactions do not stipulate for fees, and if they do, the fees are minimal;

The government cannot take it away. In March, the year 2013 Cyprus government tried to take away all uninsured deposits upper than $100 000. This cannot happen to Bitcoin, as currency is decentralized and depends on the Internet without controlling authorities. Banks cannot take it away as well;

Chargebacks are absent. When Bitcoins are sent, a return is impossible. A sender cannot take them back without the acceptor’s permission;

No one can steal personal data. BTC transactions use two encryption keys: public and private. The public one is available for everyone (technically, it is an address of your wallet) but only an owner has the private key. When coins are sent somewhere, you “sign” the transaction with a mathematical function applied to your key;

No inflation. The main problem with fiat currency is it unlimited amount. It leads to currency value decreasing. The Bitcoin is developed with a limited coin quantity. The initial idea implied that it was impossible to mine more than 21 million. It means that as soon as these numbers are reached, the further creation is impossible. Deflation takes place. The goods and services prices get lower and the coin value increases in the Bitcoin universe.

Who Can Be the Target Audience for a Cryptocurrency?

This matter mostly concerns younger generation and millennials. Finder.com conducted a demographic survey of 2001 adults in the USA. It guessed the currency owner number and how many people know about cryptocurrency. The following rates were discovered:

Only about 8% of American adults own crypto money;

The number of men is twice higher than women;

The most popular reason for the absence of BTC adoption is an idea of its uselessness;

The most popular type is Bitcoin (5.15% owners), the second one is Ethereum (1.8%);

17% are Millennials (aged between 22 and 37) who prefer cryptocurrency owning. Generation X has got 9% and Baby Boomers counted a little more than 2%.

Age statistics of cryptocurrency owners

LendEDU network has conducted a poll about money adoption as well. It surveyed 564 currency owners living in the USA. About 40% claimed the reason for investment in the “Internet coin” was the “technology that would change the world”. 21% thought about the high value: “long-term money storage means, like gold or silver”.

Friends and relatives advised 15% owning virtual money. Only 8% planned to use it as a payment instrument. The average acceptable coin sale prices reached $196 (the official exchange rate for today is $9200). One-third of the respondents got rid of their coins and the majority (67%) has never sold them for profit.

How Many People Invest in Cryptocurrency and How to Count Them?

Two ways to count the owners are described below. The trick is that the relevant and exact number that tells how many people are investing in cryptocurrency can never be counted. The system is anonymous.

Unique Addresses Used for Transactions

There are 153 million addresses belonging to users in BTC base system. This number cannot reveal the actual owner count. Users can maintain multiple addresses. From this data, we can exclude 147 million which contain less than a thousand coins in total.

Bitcoin addresses distribution

The data retrieved from Blockchain.info told that the average active address used number equals to almost 550 000.

The maximum number was registered in December, the year 2017 and counted more than one million. World news can help in watching for the address number growth.

Recall the crisis with “wannacry” virus. It attacked various companies and businesses and made them pay for safety. Several millions of new addresses appeared in the world. They were not used for constant transactions or were abandoned instantly.

Unique Accounts Used for Transactions

Blockchain.info base shows the users number with account adoption equals to 24 343 thousand. The chart shows the leap counted almost 20 million within the period between 2016 and 2018.

Statista.com shows the blockchain user number has been increasing during the period between the year 2015 and 2018 from 3 177 707 to 25 952 849. Most users can operate with multiple wallets as well as with addresses. They cannot help to know how many people have bitcoins.

The most convenient way to define a relevant BTC users number and accounts is retrieving it from exchange and wallet providers. Coinbase, for instance, has reported about 13 million users. We can define the actual user quantity is somewhere between 13 and 25 million.

How Many People Will Own Crypto Currency in the Future?

Predicting the user number is pretty difficult. Several factors allow assuming the online money owners number will rise dramatically. The fact that banks and even countries try joining the cryptocurrency fashion only proves their stability.

The most convenient way to know the actual number of how many people use bitcoin is watching the exchange sources statistics. But no evidence exists that the participant number involved in the rush will grow dramatically.